Godsticks – Faced With Rage – album review

Cardiff based Godsticks play emotional heartbreaking Prog on their new album Faced With Rage. They’ve kept the harder sound of their last album Emergence but the feel is far colder. Read what we think below.

The cover of this album is bright red with a picture of one woman side by side with herself with her eyes blacked out. It’s visually striking and quite disturbing. Who is she? Why is she censored, what’s happening. The music inside is no clearer. The overriding feeling is of loss, anger and confusion. This is done in a very restrained and particular way. The music is very precise as you would expect from Godsticks but underneath it all is an emotional flow all but frozen solid.

The music is loud and heavy and the patterns are strictly adhered to. Drum patterns are complex and the rest of the music layers up but it’s cold.

The record drips loss and heartache, that’s to say, loss and heartache given to you in a very British restrained way. There is no rage, no tears just a huge simmering and bottling up. It’s the feeling of an ending and not a happy one. The feelings are there, but they are repressed and pent up, there’s reiterations of arguments and words that should or could have been said.

The music does catch you though, it gets into your head and drags you into the exhausting war of emotion. You can try and listen to the record without getting into the lyrics but the coldness and confusion will get you in the end.

Godsticks have captured the feeling of the end of a relationship and in doing so have created their best album yet. Complex, intertwined Prog to make you shiver.